World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

WFP Head of Jacmel Sub-Office Michael Cazeau (l) stands with the FAO team and Agronomist Roland Maxime (l) at the project site in Baie d’Orange.

WFP and FAO Rome-based agencies have been working toghether in Haiti on watershed management projects in Haiti since 2009. Food assistance For Assets cash transfer activities, implemented with FAO in these two communes in the South-East department will offer temporary work to 2,730 small holder farmers. The project focusses on watershed management and will benefit 13,750 beneficiaries. 

In the two months leading up to the hurricane season, WFP and FAO aim to build 9,500 cubic metres of stone walls like these ones to protect the communities in the south east of the contry from natural disasters.

These stone walls aim to prevent further soil erosion. The barriers will protect nearby villages and infrastructure from to the expanding ravine.

FAO Agronomist Roland Maxime explains how stone walls can be reinforced with sugar canes to help stabilize the soil.

In the middle of the day, the workers at the site sit along the stone walls for a much deserved break.

FAO and WFP organise cascade trainings for participants in the projects to learn correct techniques to shape the stones used to build stone walls and learn about wall construction.

At the top of the slopes, members of the community are hard at work setting down new walls in preparation for the hurricane season.

More than half of the 1365 workers at the joint WFP and FAO project in Baie d’Orange are women from the community. 

The project employs particularly vulnerable members of the community such as people with disabilities, older members of the community, single women running households and members of the community that are still recovering from Hurricane Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaac that struck in 2012.